Bill Gates, part 3 – despised by GMO refusers

Bill Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) located in Seattle, Washington, is one of the world’s leading charities that brings advanced healthcare (including vaccinations) and other leading-edge technology to underdeveloped countries. As I’ve said before, I am not a hero worshipper, but there is something admirable and moral about a person who has built incredible wealth, and then decides to give it back to the world in a way that cannot itself be measured monetarily.

Bill and Melinda Gates appear to be genuinely devoted to helping people, especially those who lack access to modern technology and medicine. To that end, they have stated that they will give away about 95% of their wealth through charitable causes.

This focus on vaccines has made Bill Gates a target of the antivaccination lunatics. Numerous lies about Gates have become internet memes, from “Gates’ vaccines are population control” (based on a complete misreading of something he said) to Gates’ polio vaccines have paralyzed 47,000 kids in India. I refuted the most egregious lies. And then there’s the postmodernist antivaccine cretin Sayer Ji who invented a whole host of lies about Gates. I debunked those too.

Bill Gates and GMO research

Of course, the BMGF provides funding for more than vaccines. They are extremely interested in agriculture in underdeveloped countries, because malnourishment is as critical to saving lives as bringing all the vaccines ever known to prevent diseases. The BMGF has given over US$70 million in research grants for genetically engineering crops to feed people where foods are difficult to grow in sufficient quantities to feed the local population.

Cue the GMO haters, because if there’s one group that exceeds the passionate scientific illiteracy of vaccine deniers, it’s the anti-GMO crowd. I noticed a lot of GMO stories about Bill Gates, and many (if not all, because you’ll find that in the pseudoscience world there’s a tendency to repeat one meme or article over and over again, which makes it appear that it’s a broadly written “truth”) have their roots in a website called Natural Health. It’s designed and written with the same anti-science rhetoric as the similar sounding, Natural News.

Bill Gates and Monsanto

Natural Health has published a handful of articles that attack Bill Gates:

Bill Gates Foundation Buys 500,000 Shares of Monsanto. “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has purchased 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock. Monsanto is the world’s largest producer of genetically modified food, which has been tied to numerous health ailments such as sterility and infant mortality.” Well, here we go. The BMGF purchase stock for investment so that their charitable work can be funded far into the future (it can’t be 100% in Microsoft, that would be a bad investment strategy). According to the anti-GMO clique, because the foundation purchased this stock, the implication is that every decision they make will be influence by Monsanto? That’s what we call the Monsanto Shill Gambit, which is a logical fallacy that is a type of ad hominem and poisoning the well, wherein one party dismisses the other’s argument by proclaiming them to be on the payroll of some company. Unfortunately for Natural Health, there isn’t one piece of evidence that the Foundation is influenced by Monsanto. However, there is one more, and quite a bit more significant, problem–according to the last reported holdings of the Foundation (pdf), the BMGF owns stock in hundreds of companies, none of which are named Monsanto. Undoubtedly, one or more of Foundation’s institutional investments, like a mutual fund, owns stock in Monsanto, but that’s several steps away from Monsanto having any logical influence over Gates.

Conclusion

Again, I don’t deify people (and since Bill Gates is an atheist, why would I?). I’m sure Gates isn’t perfect, maybe he hates cats (no, I don’t know that, and I’m not going to waste my time refuting or supporting such nonsense). His and his foundation’s efforts to help feed the world, save children from malnutrition (and vaccine preventable diseases), and find innovative ways to improve the world are the absolute definition of a moral human being.

The anti-GMO horde can only rely upon logical fallacies, bad science, and straight up lying to attack the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I’m sure he doesn’t care, and I’m sure he’s going to continue doing what is best for people all over the world. Because the Gates family seems to genuinely care about making the world a better place when they leave it compared to when they entered. How many of us can say that?

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in September 2013. It has been completely revised and updated to include more comprehensive information, to improve readability and to add current research.

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